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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 May 2022
This article examines the theory of recollection in Plato's Meno and attempts to unravel some long-standing puzzles about it. What are the prenatal objects of the soul's vision? What are the post-natal objects of the soul's recollection? What is innate in the Meno? Why does Socrates (prima facie) suggest that both knowledge and true opinion are innate? The article pays particular attention to the ana- prefix in the verbs aneuriskô, anakineô and analambanô, and suggests that they are used for two distinct stages of recollection: a phenomenological stage of ‘finding again’ or ‘awakening’ our innate content, which Plato calls doxa, and an epistemic stage of ‘getting it back’ as epistêmê. Thinking of the verbs with this ‘back/again’ sense of the ana- prefix (instead of as ‘up’, in the common translation of analambanô as ‘take up’) allows us to understand why Plato would simultaneously imply that our souls had prenatal epistêmê, have post-natal innate true opinion and have the potential to analambanein epistêmê. He is not talking about ‘taking up’ epistêmê that he also calls doxa, but about ‘getting back’ the epistêmê we had prenatally. The article concludes with an examination of what this innate content is, suggesting that it is a type of ‘principle’ and ‘essential’ mental content.
I would like to thank Dana Miller for countless discussions of Plato over the years, and for encouraging me to think about the ana- prefix, as well as CQ's anonymous reader and the Editor for their helpful comments.
1 Innate knowledge has been proposed by, for example, Bluck, R., Plato's Meno (Cambridge, 1961)Google Scholar, Sharples, R., Plato: Meno (Warminster, 1985)Google Scholar, Scott, D., Plato's Meno (Cambridge, 2006)Google Scholar; innate true belief by Gulley, N., ‘Plato's theory of recollection’, CQ 4 (1954), 194–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Bedu-Addo, J., ‘Sense-experience and recollection in Plato's Meno’, AJPh 104 (1983), 28–48Google Scholar and Gentzler, J., ‘Recollection and the problem of the Socratic elenchus’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 10 (1994), 257–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; innate mental content by Caston, V., ‘Connecting traditions: Augustine and the Greeks on intentionality’, in Perler, D. (ed.), Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality (Leiden, 2001), 23–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Wolfsdorf, D., ‘Plato's conception of knowledge’, CW 105 (2011), 57–75Google Scholar and Bronstein, D. and Schwab, W., ‘Is Plato an innatist in the Meno?’, Phronesis 64 (2019), 392–430CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (T. Williams perhaps also holds an innate content view in ‘Two aspects of Platonic recollection’, Apeiron 35 [2002], 131–52.) Finally, innatism seems to be denied outright in Franklin, L., ‘Meno's paradox, the slave-boy interrogation, and the unity of Platonic recollection’, SJPh 47 (2009), 349–77Google Scholar. Fine, G., in ‘Inquiry in the Meno’, in Kraut, R. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge, 1992), 200–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar and in The Possibility of Inquiry: Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus (Oxford, 2014), denies all innate objects except perhaps innate dispositions (construed in the weak sense, as ‘first potentialities’).
2 For a view that the forms are not present in the Meno, see Lafrance, Y., ‘Les puissances cognitives de l’âme: la réminiscence et les formes intelligibles dans le Ménon (80a–86d) et le Phédon (72e–77a)’, Études Platoniciennes 4 (2007), 239–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a view that they are present in the Meno, see L. Brisson, ‘La réminiscence dans le Ménon (81c5–d5)’, in M. Erler and L. Brisson (edd.), Gorgias – Menon: Selected Papers from the Seventh Symposium Platonicum (Sankt Augustin, 2007), 199–203.
3 See Schwab, W., ‘The metaphysics of recollection’, Apeiron 53 (2020), 213–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (Schwab thinks that there are three or four stages.)
4 Not the ‘first’ stage because there might be an earlier stage or stages: Schwab (n. 3).
5 The active form is typically used transitively for reminding someone of something; Plato uses the passive form in the theory of recollection. On the etymology of the verbal form, see Sorabji, R., Aristotle on Memory (London, 1972), 35 with n. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Hackforth, R., Plato's Phaedo (Cambridge, 1955), 74Google Scholar, Bluck (n. 1), 46–7, W. Guthrie, Plato: The Man & his Dialogues (Earlier Period), A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 1975), 253–4, Brisson (n. 2) and Helmig, C., Forms and Concepts: Concept Formation in the Platonic Tradition (Berlin, 2012), 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 52 all accept or lean towards the Platonic forms, or something like them, being present in the Meno. Gulley, N., Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1962), 19Google Scholar, Sharples (n. 1), 14, McCabe, M., Plato's Individuals (Cambridge, 1994), 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, R. Weiss, Virtue in the Cave: Moral Inquiry in Plato's Meno (Oxford, 2001), 75 and Lafrance (n. 2) accept or lean towards their absence. See H. Benson, Clitophon's Challenge: Dialectic in Plato's Meno, Phaedo, and Republic (Oxford, 2015), 78 n. 79 for additional references.
7 We do not see virtuous actions in this prenatal period, for this would no more help one learn to define ‘virtue’ than seeing virtuous actions in this life (similarly Gulley [n. 1], 195–6).
8 Dancy, R., Plato's Introduction of Forms (Cambridge, 2004), 240–1Google Scholar notes several features of the Meno's account of recollection that anticipate the Platonic forms but ultimately concludes that they are absent from the Meno: the theory of forms ‘could not have been reconstructed from the Meno and its predecessors’. I agree. But as Dancy says elsewhere: ‘if we ask: What is it that the slave is recollecting, and what is it that we recollect in successfully answering Socrates’ “what is it?” questions, and if we expect the Doctrine of Recollection to have any bearing on the question what excellence is, what had better be recollected is the form, excellence’ (‘Platonic definitions and forms’, in H.H. Benson [ed.], A Companion to Plato [Malden, MA, 2006], 70–84, at 80). My ‘proto-forms’ are meant to capture both of these concerns. They differ from traditional forms in terms of scope (i.e. there seem to be more proto-forms than traditional forms) and causality (i.e. it is not clear that proto-forms are causally responsible for their instantiations in the way traditional forms are). Thanks to Noah Hahn for raising this question.
9 ‘Mental content’ refers to definite, particular items in the mind. These are sometimes called mental representations. Many things ‘count’ as mental content: propositions, beliefs, opinions, knowledge, concepts, ideas, thoughts, notions, information, etc. What the differences between these things are, and which entail which, is, of course, a difficult question. But we can say that the soul seems to acquire some mental content and that Plato calls this mental content ἐπιστήμη and δόξα at various points of the Meno.
10 The idea of the soul's prenatal vision bestowing it with mental content is perhaps suggested at Phdr. 247d2–3, where ‘seeing’ the forms allows the soul to, in the translation by A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff (Plato: Phaedrus [Indianapolis, 1995]), ‘take in (δέξασθαι) what is appropriate to it’. (Cf. δέχομαι at Ti. 33c5, which suggests the literal entering of something into the body.) On the account of ‘learn’ as ‘take in content’, see Williams (n. 1), 134–5 and Dancy (n. 8), 225 n. 30, both of whom suggest something similar, though in different terms.
11 See, for example, Williams (n. 1), 137.
12 To be clear, I am suggesting that, in the Meno's discussion of the soul's prenatal existence, one has learned x and knows x if one has seen x and has content corresponding to x within oneself. I discuss what this content might be in more detail below.
13 This, then, yields a different interpretation of the phrase τῆς φύσεως ἁπάσης συγγενοῦς οὔσης from the standard suggestions in the literature. It is not about the ‘kinship of nature’ existing in a defined structure, but the possibility of repeating a mental phenomenon. Cf. Tigner, S.S., ‘On the “kinship” of “all nature” in Plato's Meno’, Phronesis 15 (1970), 1–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who is also sceptical of the traditional reading of this passage.
14 Gulley (n. 1), 197 speaks of two main stages, one of ‘stirring up’ innate opinions and one of ‘converting’ them into knowledge. But it is important to note that there might be other stages, as Schwab (n. 3) points out.
15 See Bronstein and Schwab (n. 1) for a similar reading of this passage.
16 Cf. Phd. 73a9, where ἔνειμι again seems to signify an innate object.
17 Some have taken the connotation of ὥσπερ ὄναρ to instead have the sense of epistemic insecurity (e.g. Bluck [n. 1]). This might be right, but I think that Plato is at least making my phenomenological point, if not also making the epistemic one. For a discussion of dreams closer to what I mean, see D. Gallop, ‘Dreaming and waking in Plato’, in J. Anton and G. Kustas (edd.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Albany, 1971), 187–201, at 195–6 and Dodds, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), 102–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A key Platonic text that uses this conception of dreams, i.e. as a source of hard-to-grasp truths, is Resp. 571d6–572a8 (discussed in Gallop [this note]).
18 I discuss which opinions the slave recollects in section 6.
19 Most scholars take this to refer back to 85c10–d1, because Socrates claims at 98a3–8 that he and Meno ‘agreed earlier’ that recollection is the ‘tying down’ of true opinions with a reasoning about the explanation, and nothing else in the recollection discussion sounds remotely close to that besides 85c10–d1. (See further G. Fine, ‘Knowledge and true belief in the Meno’, OSAPh 27 [2004], 41–81.) The hypothetical method (86c–87c) might have something to do with the conversion process. Perhaps the phenomenological stage of recollection supplies the hypotheses for the method, which is then used to question ‘often and in many ways’, leading to knowledge?
20 I discuss and defend my translation below.
21 See Woolf, R., ‘Knowing how to ask: a discussion of Gail Fine's The Possibility of Inquiry’, OSAPh 49 (2015), 363–91Google Scholar, especially 378–81, and Scott (n. 1), 105–12. Bronstein and Schwab (n. 1), who think that Plato calls our innate content either ‘knowledge’ or ‘true opinion’ depending on the context, argue that Plato calls the innate content ‘knowledge’ here.
22 Both of these translations of ἀναλαμβάνω are ambiguous: one can metaphorically ‘take up’ a new topic for consideration, or one can ‘take up’ a stone from the ground. Similarly, one can ‘recover’ a territory from an enemy, or one can ‘recover’ a piece of jewellery from the couch. The passage in question only seems to require innate knowledge if ἀναλαμβάνω is understood in the second sense of either translation. Moreover, the Greek here does not need to imply innate knowledge because there is no τὴν before the phrase ἐν αὑτῷ ἐπιστήμην at 85d6.
23 See Ti. 26a3, 26b2, Criti. 113b1 and Phlb. 34b7–c2 for uses of ἀναλαμβάνω strikingly similar to the above passage. In all of these, the thing ‘gotten back’ is not present in the same form as that in which it is gotten back; rather, some sort of conversion is required in each case (from loose memories to a coherent story, from Egyptian to Greek meaning, and from bodily impressions to memories of them, respectively). These parallel the conversion of true opinion into knowledge. (Thanks to CQ's Editor for allowing the American form ‘gotten’ here; its use was necessary for consistently translating ἀναλαμβάνω as ‘get back’.)
24 Similarly, the prepositional phrases ἐξ αὑτοῦ and ἐν αὑτῷ have been thought to ensure that knowledge is in the slave as well. But these only imply that knowledge is in the slave when ἀναλαμβάνω is construed as ‘take up’; when instead translated as ‘get back’, it is perfectly natural to take ἐξ αὑτοῦ as ‘by oneself’ and ἐν αὑτῷ as the location of reception for the thing gotten back. (See H.W. Smyth, Greek Grammar [Cambridge, MA, 1920], §1688c and E. van Emde Boas, A. Rijksbaron, L. Huitink and M. de Bakker, The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek [Cambridge, 2019], 387, on this causal use of ἐξ; and see Resp. 588c9 and Phlb. 34b7–c2 for arguably similar uses of ἐξ αὑτοῦ and ἐν αὑτῷ in Plato.)
25 Bronstein and Schwab (n. 1), 398–9 object that Plato's other uses of the ‘(ἀνα)λαμβάνω [an accusative] ἐκ [a genitive]’ construction make it ‘clear that the thing which is “taken (up)” is already present in the thing from which it is taken (see, for example, Phaedrus 253a2–4, Republic 617d3–5 and Hippias Major 282b7–c1)’. But Phd. 74b2 seems to contradict that, as does Cra. 422b1–2. (Cf. n. 23 above.) Moreover, their cited passages use λαμβάνω, not ἀναλαμβάνω.
26 This thus answers Woolf's ([n. 21], 378–81) worry that, if we do not find innate knowledge in this section, nothing in the slave demonstration prepares Meno to accede to Socrates’ questions here.
27 Cf. the ‘whiplash’ Bronstein and Schwab speak of ([n. 1], 396). On my view, however, the reader is well prepared for the transition to ἀναλαμβάνειν ἐπιστήμην.
28 Like most scholars, I take the ‘correct’ opinions here to be equivalent to ‘true’ opinions. Bronstein and Schwab (n. 1) do not address this passage.
29 I say ‘probably’ because the slave demonstration could be a mere analogy for recollection in moral enquiry. That is, Socrates might only think that moral content is innate but proceeds as if geometrical/mathematical content were as well for pedagogical purposes.
30 I do not presume to know how to fill this in for Plato.
31 N. Malebranche, The Search after Truth, transl. T. Lennon and P. Olscamp (Cambridge, 1997), 227 (originally published as R.P. Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité. Où l'on traitte de la nature de l'esprit de l'homme, & de l'usage qu'il en doit faire pour eviter l'erreur dans les sciences. Quatriéme Edition reveuë, & augmentée de plusieurs Eclaircissemens [Paris, 1678]). One might worry that a similar problem arises if Plato admits essential content of mathematical shapes (e.g. 99- and 627-sided figures). But Plato might think that certain shapes can be composed of other shapes, or that, at some point, certain shapes cease to be common objects of reasoning and thus do not have corresponding proto-forms (cf. Prm. 130c–d). Thanks to Nick Smyth for raising this issue.
32 Contrast, for example, Dancy (n. 8), 232–3 and Bronstein and Schwab (n. 1), 395.
33 Schwab (n. 3) rightly challenges the assumption that recollection cannot result in false opinions, though he himself neither endorses nor denies the claim. There is nothing wrong with saying that the process of recollection requires the elicitation of false opinions, but that does not mean that recollection requires finding again a false opinion.
34 Smyth (n. 24), §1688c.
35 Thanks to Dana Miller for the Protagoras reference.
36 See Ionescu, C., ‘Elenchus, recollection, and the method of hypothesis in the Meno’, The Plato Journal 17 (2017), 9–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 13–14 for a similar view of how the slave finds the answer.
37 The question ‘what is the side of the eight-foot square?’ is introduced from 82d7–e3 and answered at 85b2–4. Before asking this, Socrates spends some time asking the slave rudimentary questions about shapes and mathematical relationships (cited below).
38 Dancy (n. 8), 229–30 also examines the conversation for a glimpse of the slave's opinions.
39 Taylor, C., ‘Plato's epistemology’, in Fine, G. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Plato (Oxford, 2008), 165–90Google Scholar, at 174–5 also denies the slave's recollection of the answer and speaks of recollecting ‘principles’ and ‘shapes’. Franklin (n. 1), 363 reads this passage as indicating the recollection of the properties of squares. However, Franklin does not think that the propositions recollected in the discussion were innate. Instead, he thinks that they were inchoate in the slave's ordinary grasp of the property ‘squareness’.
40 Gentzler (n. 1), 277–9 thinks that the slave has not recollected mathematical concepts in the discussion with Socrates, because she thinks that recollection has not occurred before 82e12–13. Her main reason for thinking this, as far as I can tell, is that this would imply that the slave has recollected false opinions. But I do not see why a false opinion must be the object of recollection here, instead of the earlier discussion of mathematical principles and concepts cited above. Cf. Schwab's ([n. 3], 218–19) critique of Gentzler (n. 1) on this point.
41 The slave also has innately essential and principle content corresponding to moral proto-forms, though he does not begin to recollect this with Socrates.
42 See Malebranche (n. 31) for critiques of the ‘infinite storehouse’ model of mind.
43 One possible reason for this is that Plato did not have a theory of abstraction at this time. If so, the general rule of multiplication or division being applicable to an infinite variety of instances might seem other-worldly. If one cannot consider an infinity of examples, how can one come to believe that a rule is generalizable across them? Alcinous proposes such an interpretation of recollection in the Didaskalikos (25.3).